“Sokos collect together, and make a drumming noise, some say with
hollow trees, then burst forth into loud yells, which are well imitated
by the natives’ embryonic music. If a man has no spear, the Soko goes
away satisfied; but if wounded, he seizes the wrist, lops off the
fingers and spits them out, slaps the cheeks of his victim, and bites
without breaking the skin; he draws out a spear (but never uses it),
and takes some leaves and stuffs them into his wound to staunch the
blood; he does not seek an encounter with an armed man. He sees women
do him no harm, and never molests them; a man without a spear is
nearly safe from him. Manyuema say, ‘Soko is a man, and nothing bad
in him.’ They live in communities of about ten, each having his own
female; an intruder from another camp is beaten off with their fists
and loud yells. If one tries to seize the female of another, he is
caught on the ground, and all unite in boxing and biting the offender.
A male often carries a child, especially if they are passing from one
patch of forest to another over a grassy space; he then gives it to the
mother.”
The “Last Journals” contains a portrait of a young Soko (reproduced on
page 47), which shows a short-armed, weak-legged, long-eared creature;
and in the engraving on page 48, the adults which are being hunted are
certainly very much shorter than the natives who are killing them.
All that can be said, then, is that possibly the Soko is a kind of
Troglodyte, greatly resembling the kind we have next to notice; but
its geographical range is most interesting. Its being found so many
hundreds of miles from the Sierra del Crystal, and beyond the woods
of the coast-living Chimpanzees, would appear to prove that formerly
there were forest and jungle far away to the east, where there are now
plains, rivers, and lakes with much forest land.
[Illustration: CHIMPANZEE. (_From a Sketch by Wolf, in the possession
of the Zoological Society._)]
THE TRUE CHIMPANZEE.[11]
The name Chimpanzee has sometimes been given to all the great Apes just
described, but reference has been made, in considering some points
in their anatomy and habits, to a particular animal which bears this
name. This one comes next to them in the descending order of the scale
of beings, and completes the number of the kinds of these man-shaped
Apes of Equatorial Africa. It is the animal, the young of which have
frequently been brought to England, where they have been celebrated
for their gentle fun, romping play, good climbing, and their ability
to imitate many human habits--clothes-wearing, tobacco-smoking, and
tea-drinking especially. It is the Chimpanzee of Chimpanzees, the
young of which have such very human-looking faces and most baby-like
skulls. Being covered for the most part, and especially on the top
and sides of the head, with long black hairs, it is called the Black
Chimpanzee, or _Troglodytes niger_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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